Today we were out working with our colleague, Dr. Pradeep N. Sawardekar and the Child Eye Care Charitable Trust in Mandkhurd slum located on the outskirts of Mumbai, directly next to a major thoroughfare on the way to New Bombay. Mandkhurd is characterized as a 'new slum' meaning it has not been recognized by the government, is only a few years old (as opposed to generational slums throughout Mumbai) and can be bulldozed down by the police at any time. Presently there are over 30,000 people living in Mandkhurd, mostly migrants from the North (Bihar and Gujarat) who have left their tribal communities to try to find work in the city.

The poverty is striking before you even enter and only gets worse as you walk around. Homes are ramshackle affairs, tin and cardboard, plastic tarps, mud floors, raw sewage and dead rats can be seen in the narrow walkways between buildings and garbage is everywhere. There is no water source, so people wait with 5 gallon plastic containers for water trucks selling water to arrive. One of the mothers told us that people here sometimes get water from open sewage pipes. We saw a group of girls playing and lowering buckets down a narrow, almost empty, well to pull up water that looked questionable at best and most likely polluted and dangerous. There is some commerce here; guys stitching together sacks, kids making wire brushes out of pounded nails and a foundry making metal rods. Still these people have so little and the diet is largely dahl (lentils) and roti (tortillas).

In the midst of this precarious environment, Dr. Shilpa Bhatte and her crew of health care workers are doing incredible work. Dr. Bhatte was one of Dr. Pradeep’s students, and has now dedicated her life to helping the poorest of the poor in India. She organized a base-line door to door survey in this community and found that 74% of the children under 5 are malnourished with 39% showing grade 3 (quite severe) chronic malnutrition.

We visited a prenatal nutrition class at the clinic the Child Eye Care Charitable Trust has set up in the slum. As we walked around we found groups of doctors and health care workers doing medical evaluations and vitamin A distributions. At the start of the distributions, women with babies and children in tow were told the importance of vitamin A and how the dose the children were receiving would help their health. Matt Dayka, our photographer, took some great pictures, and Zoe, my 17-year-old daughter, was able to interview some of the mothers and learn about their lives and the dreams they have for their children (look for new field stories coming soon!). The amazing thing is to see any hope in the midst of these deplorable conditions but that in effect is what Child Eye Care Charitable Trust is bringing – a chance for a better future for these children.

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Dr. Shilpa Bhatte in Mandkhurd Slum, Mumbai India from Vitamin Angels on Vimeo.